You Have an Idea. What's Next?

The Four Things You Must Validate

Miss even one of these, and you're building on sand.

1. Market Size and Growth

You need three numbers:

TAM (Total Addressable Market): Every possible customer if you had 100% market share.

SAM (Serviceable Available Market): The slice you can realistically reach with your business model and resources.

SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market): What you can capture in 1-3 years given competition and realistic execution.

But here's what matters more: growth rate. Is this market growing 3% per year or 30%? A stagnant $10B market is harder to crack than a growing $1B market.

Reality check: Map your SOM to revenue targets. If you're charging $3,000/month, you need 17 customers to hit $50K MRR in Year 1. If you're charging $50/month, you need 1,000. Can your market support those numbers? If your SOM can't realistically deliver the revenue you need to survive and grow, you have a pricing problem or a market problem. Fix it now.

2. Your Ideal Customer

"Everyone" isn't a customer.

Answer these:

• Who has the most pain from this problem?

• How many exist in your market?

• What does their buying process look like?

• Who makes the purchase decision?

• What's their budget for this solution?

Be specific. "Small business owners" is lazy. "Solo accounting firm owners with 1-3 employees doing $200K-$500K annually who currently use Excel for client management" is validation-ready.

Reality check: Can you identify where 1,000+ of these people gather? Specific subreddits, LinkedIn groups, industry conferences, Slack communities? If you can't pinpoint where to find them at scale, you'll struggle with customer acquisition.

3. Competition and Market Gaps

Every market has competition. If yours doesn't, you haven't looked hard enough.

Map the landscape:

• Who are the direct competitors?

• What do they charge?

• What business models do they use?

• Where are customers complaining about existing solutions?

• What niche is genuinely underserved?

You're not looking for zero competition. You're looking for a defendable position where you can deliver 10x better value to a specific segment.

Why 10x? Two reasons:

First, switching costs are real. Your customers are already using something (even if it's Excel or manual processes). To get them to switch, you need to be dramatically better, not marginally better. 10% better gets ignored. 10x better gets attention.

Second, investors fund companies that can dominate categories, not compete in crowded markets. If your pitch is "we're slightly better than the five existing solutions," you won't raise capital. If your pitch is "we're 10x better for this specific segment because of X structural advantage," you're fundable.

4. Investor Appetite

Even if you're bootstrapping, investor interest tells you something: is this a space where smart money sees returns?

Check recent funding rounds in your category. Are investors writing checks? At what stage? What metrics do they want?

If investors consistently avoid your space, there's usually a reason. Maybe unit economics don't work, or customer acquisition costs are too high. Find out now, not three years in when you need capital.

What Real Validation Looks Like

Not a survey. Not your mom saying it's great.

Real validation is:

• 20+ conversations with potential customers describing their pain (without you pitching your solution)

• Market research showing clear growth trends

• Competitive analysis documenting specific gaps your positioning addresses

• A spreadsheet with realistic customer acquisition projections for Years 1-3

• Evidence of recent funding activity in your category

This takes 2-4 weeks. It might save you 2-4 years of building the wrong thing.

The Real Question

The question isn't "Can I build this?"

It's "Should I build this?"

Your idea deserves evidence, not hope.

At Lean Spot, I help founders validate before they build. I've saved founders months of wasted effort and over $100K in development costs. Book a free consultation and I'll map out your validation roadmap before you write your first line of code.

Start with validation. Build with certainty.